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Love of Reading's
A Labor Lost
For Many Now

By

Daniel Henninger

Updated July 16, 2004 12:01 a.m. ET

You may have read recently that reading is dying. Or at least the reading of what the National Endowment for the Arts calls "literature." Literature as defined by the Endowment includes novels, short stories, poetry and plays. Chiseling data from the statistical mountain of the 2002 Census, the Endowment discovered in its sample of 17,000 adults that the percentage of self-identified grown-ups in the U.S. who read "literature" fell to 46.7% from 56.9% in 1982.